Soothing Offences
by Benedetta
Summary: A different twist to Offensive Action (S8)


Title: "Soothing offences"  
  
Author: Benedetta (feedback is very very much appreciated, post to: benedettaonjag@yahoo.com.au)  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Disclaimer: Don't own Mac & Harm. never did, never will.  
  
Spoilers: Everything up to Offensive Action (Season 8). Quotes from Lifeline (S6), Adrift II, JAGathon, The Mission (S7) and Critical Condition (S8).  
  
Summary: a different twist to Offensive Action (S8)  
  
Author's Notes: Inspired by some comments made on the shipper list about the "Are you interested in sex with junior officers?" line. Mac's thoughts in this part mirror very much mine on the show. I might be taking out my own frustrations with emotional fuckwits (thanks, Bridget Jones). Just my two cents. Many thanks to Amy and Tammy for betaing and to Jag Archive and Dress Whites, as references.  
  
  
  
"I think you're in denial"  
  
"You ever considered a career in psychiatry?"  
  
"No"  
  
"Well, that's good. I'd follow that instinct. Maybe you're the one who's in denial."  
  
"I don't ogle junior officers and advertise my desire to have sex with them."  
  
"Are you interested in sex with junior officers?"  
  
  
  
"Is that a request?"  
  
"Come on, Mac, give me a break, I'm junior only by few months. Do you really have to rub it on my face like that?!"  
  
The words are out of my mouth before I can think, but then I freeze and it dawns on me the meaning of what she said. My flyboy ego went straight after the "junior" part and my brain skipped the rest. Typical, she's probably right, I might not be chauvinist, but I AM arrogant.  
  
My mouth goes dry, her words echoing into my head: "Is that a request?".  
  
I feel like I can't move, my muscles suddenly uncooperative. I want to look at her; I want to look in her eyes, almost not believing that she really said the words. I "need" to look at her to see if she remembered, to check that she's not hurt.  
  
But I can't move. The memory of another request washes over me: memory of how beautiful she looked under the Southern Cross' sky, of how her words came totally out of the blue, of how I thought this was too much too soon for our already strained relationship to handle. What I remember the most, however, is how everything after that question went straight down the hill, how helpless I felt when my world started spinning and I couldn't make it stop. What did I say to her once? "You lose control in my world and you die".  
  
Funny, I didn't let go, 'cause I didn't want to lose control, but that's precisely what happened. I lost control of the most important thing in my life: my relationship with Mac. The thing I remember the most, 'though, is the hurt in her eyes and that I didn't know how to make it go away.  
  
I finally make myself look at her. Her eyes are so big; they seem to convey all her feelings in their brown depths. I could happily drown in those depths. I see immediately that the question came out of her mouth before she could register what she was saying. It was only supposed to be a witty comeback; she always has one of those up her sleeves. It was supposed to be just some of the friendly banter and easiness with each other that we got back in this stage of our newly discovered friendship. The "post-Jagathon phase", as I like to call it, when I talk to myself.  
  
I can see in her eyes that she's terrified of how it came out and it hurts so much to see her fear, because I know that I'm the one who put it there. Me, along with her abusive father and all the men that hurt the frail Sarah, who's hiding behind the tough as nails marine façade. The girl abandoned by her mother, the one who can't believe to be worthy of being loved, the one who wants a family so badly, the one who wants to feel like she belongs to someone.  
  
It hurts so much not to be able to just tell her how I feel about her, not to be able to take her pain away.  
  
I tried, I swear I did. I tried on the admiral's porch, but I didn't have the right to say the words, I tried when Mic left, but then Renee showed up and I owed it to our long-term relationship to be there for her, I tried on the Guadalcanal, but Mac wouldn't listen.  
  
. and I would like to try now, in a hangar with planes, with the rain that is coming down in sheets from a troubled sky.  
  
Without my mind noticing I find myself stepping closer to her, my arms trying to pull her into an embrace and, surprisingly enough, she gives into it immediately, her body relaxing in my arms. Maybe she's tired of fighting this thing between us, I know she's tired of this dance. "Thing between us", who do I think I kid? Call it with its name, sailor, let's face it, call it love.  
  
"It would never be just sex with you, Sarah", I found myself murmuring in the sweet softness of her hair.  
  
The roaring of the rain hitting on the roof of the hangar almost swallowed his voice. He said it softly, not because he did not mean it, but because he wanted his voice to soothe her, to let her know what he seemed to find so difficult to express in words, to lull her, like a sweet caress. The smell of rain and the soft mist surrounded them, almost like a cocoon.  
  
They stood like that for what seemed a lifetime, in each other arms, savouring the feeling, filing every single sensation in their memory. He could loose himself, standing like this, out of the rain, the warm softness of Mac's body in his arms, the sweet smell of hair shampoo, the silky texture of her hair against his cheek. No, it couldn't be just sex with her; it would be "forever".  
  
Then, abruptly, the warmth, the feeling of belonging, was gone from his arms. He could already feel a tight knot forming in his stomach, a familiar sensation that I knew all too well since, against the Admiral's better judgement, he had looked back at Sydney Airport, only to see Mac kissing Mic Brumby. This time, he was looking at her retreating figure; he was looking at Sarah running away from him, once again, her shoulders shaking slightly in what he knew were sobs. Before he could react, before he could process what just happened, let alone understand it, she was gone.  
  
Harm looked back outside. It kept raining cats and dogs. Were he a sappy poet, he would have said that the sky was crying his same desperation, but he was a fighter-jock, he had been trained to catch whatever life threw his way, he had learned to do it the hard way, by personal experience, when he was very young and his father had not come home. Harm squared his shoulders, replaced his shield back into place, God knew how it was becoming much harder every time to do so, and walked back to the office.  
  
***************************************************************************  
  
The next few days passed uneventfully.  
  
Well, not exactly so.  
  
He and Manetti had won the case, getting Commander O'Neill off the hook, and Manetti had given him a sort of a partnership ring. Weird thing, they had well passed the age, when you give presents to your friends to win them over. She said she wanted his trust; she wanted at least to be given a chance to earn it, along with his respect. It wasn't asking too much, he had to admit, but, thing was, he just couldn't picture the two of them as partners. It was not only the fact that she was still on probation on the suspicion of being the SecNav spy, or the fact that her accent got to his nerves.  
  
To him, this Manetti situation was just something temporary. Mac was his partner. Mac the kick-ass Marine, who had stopped him from losing himself on a dock in Norfolk, the one who followed him to Russia, the one who was there, when he said his final good bye to his father. Mac was the one person he shared complete trust and respect with, Mac was the one he knew he could always count on, and likewise.  
  
Or was she?  
  
Mac...  
  
She had avoided him carefully after the scene in the hangar.  
  
He had tried to talk to her, cornering her once at JAG. They were in the break-room and he had come up to her from behind, while she was pouring herself a cup of coffee. He had been able to murmur just a "Mac", halfway between a plea and a request, before she had shrugged him off with a "Harm, don't", that had left him abashed. Her tone had been a mixture of coldness and distant sadness, as if she had given up, lost all her energies, as if she did not care anymore. It didn't even sound like her voice.  
  
He had also tried to talk to her outside of JAG, but she wouldn't pick up the phone and the two times he stopped by at her place, she hadn't opened the door, pretending not to be there.  
  
Maybe Marines didn't duck, but, man, did they know how to take cover!  
  
He was starting to worry about her. He could see the pallor of her face, the anguished look in her eyes and the fear, yes, the fear, the one he hated himself so much for, that fear was back again.  
  
This had to stop, they had to stop it, "he" had to stop it right now! They were grown ups, for God's sake, adults successful in their professions, they were officers, damned good ones, for the matter. How was it possible that they had the ability of handling emotions of a five years old?  
  
Note to self: don't insult five years old; little AJ had probably more emotional maturity than the two of them together. Little AJ knew whom he loved and he did not have a problem showing it openly, he loved Auntie Mac and would look at her with his big blue eyes and tell her so with no dances and metaphors.  
  
"You have someone who will always love you"... "You know the reason". "I'm glad you're here ".  
  
'Jeez, just say the damned words once and for all, Rabb! Take the risk and get done with it.'  
  
Harm knew that he was getting all riled up, but he couldn't help it. He suddenly realised that he had stood up from the sofa, where he had been lying contemplating the situation, and was now pacing nervously his living room. He banged against the coffee table, hurting his shin. Hell, the lounge was not big enough for his 6 feet frame to get hysterically restless.  
  
He had to get out of there. He was going to have this damned talk with Mac this time, once and for all, no more excuses, no more "when it happens". He was going to talk to her now and to hell with it!  
  
Harm grabbed his keys and his flight jacket and flew out of the apartment without a second thought.  
  
How he got to Mac's place, he couldn't tell. He just turned on the engine of his SUV and, a little while later, he found himself pulling up in front of her house. Autopilot, he guessed. Harm climbed her steps and stopped right in front of her door, suddenly frightened. He "did" want to talk to her, he "needed" to talk to her. Only, now that he was few seconds from doing it for real, he didn't know what to say. All right, all right, he knew what needed to be said, what he wanted to say. Just "how" to say it, where to start from, that was the problem. 'Breathe, Rabb, just breathe, in from the nose and out from the mouth'.  
  
Taking a long, deep breath, Harm knocked on Mac's door.  
  
************************************************************************ Mac was curled up on her sofa, watching a sappy video, a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. Nothing better, when you are depressed, than a good comfort movie, a "chick-flick", as Mic used to call them, and a nice hot chocolate. In her current frame of mind, she could definitely use them both. Why shouldn't she?  
  
The whole Afghanistan ordeal had left her totally drained, in more ways than one. First, hers and Harm's accident with the landmine, looking straight in the eyes her worst fear since that fateful night last May, the fear of loosing him forever. Then, the night in the desert, the emotional roller coaster of being in his arms, so close, yet, she wouldn't fool herself, so distant from everything she ever dreamed of. The dirty nuke and the mortal danger they all faced, Harm up in the air, herself and the rest of the Seahawk crew down on the sea.  
  
However, she and Harm had been able to cope with all that, maybe their relationship even moved somehow forward because of it. The friendly banter back between them, even tending towards being sexual innuendoes from Harm's part.  
  
"Come on, Mac. What are you doing? Open up."  
  
"Uh, packing."  
  
"Well, open up. Let me help."  
  
"I'm also dressing."  
  
"I can help with that, too."  
  
"Put you on a carrier and you revert to..."  
  
She smiled at the memory, but her face grew quickly serious. It had been their last joke for a while, as the magnitude of Bud's tragedy hit them. Even then, 'though, their relationship seemed to grow stronger. Harm tried to protect her by wanting to be the one disobeying the Admiral's orders. He had comforted her out of sickbay, while they were waiting for news on Bud, and he had even let himself cry in her arms, when the wait was over.  
  
She really thought they were going somewhere this time, somewhere where they both spoke the same language, where they would be on the same page and want the same things. Nevertheless, nothing happened. For one single step that they would manage to make forward, they would do three steps backwards and she was tired of it. Tired of the dance, tired of having to suppress her feelings all the time, tired of having to keep her guard so high.  
  
When she made that stupid comment the other day, about his line being a request for a fling, she would have kicked herself. It was out there, before she could really register it in her brain. It hurt so much to relive again all the pain that that single comment seemed to have generated.  
  
Harm had taken her into his arms and she had wanted nothing more than to lose herself into him. She had even allowed herself to, just for a few moments, but then all the feelings had overwhelmed her and she had wanted nothing but to get as far as possible from him. "It would never be just sex with you, Sarah", he had called her with her first name. It was always so special.  
  
He would say something like that 'though and then go back to business, as if nothing had ever happened. It had happened so many times already. One step forward, three steps backwards. She couldn't take anymore of this, she just could not. It was not healthy. That was why she had left him standing in that hangar, that was why she didn't want to talk about it anymore, that was why she had given up on him. She had enough, as simple as that. Seven years of this was enough, it was already more than she could take. Everyone had a breaking point and she had reached hers. It was not going to be easy, but she knew she had to get Harm out of her head for good this time. ...and she was trying, a cup of hot chocolate helping her out.  
  
The knock on her door startled her. It was pretty late, not real late, but late enough for not being the right time for a social call. Mac wondered who it could be, and headed towards the door.  
  
Perfect, just what she needed. "Harmful" Rabb, on the other side of her door. She could just be real quite and he might go away. The knocks on her door intensified.  
  
"Mac, open up! I know you're home, open up!!"  
  
Jeez, was he out of his mind or what? Did he want her neighbours to call the police? Anyhow, how dared he come to her home, in the middle of the night, banging against her door like that? Who did he think he was? He had no right whatsoever, for God's sake! This was really too much. Mac junked the door wide-open, pure rage flashing from her eyes.  
  
"Get in, now", she ordered with her best boot camp drill Sergeant tone.  
  
Harm was completely taken aback by both her tone and her expression, fear creeping into his cocky flyboy armour. Maybe coming here hadn't been such a good idea, maybe he could just tell her to forget it, that it wasn't important, and he could retreat, as fast as possible, maybe...  
  
"I said: GET IN HERE, COMMANDER, NOW!"  
  
Harm jumped, startled. She was yelling now, very very bad sign. Why was she yelling, anyhow? It was not as if he had done anything yet. Harm squared his shoulders and walked into the lion's den. He would make the Navy proud.  
  
"What do you want, Harm?", her tone was ice cold now, her voice low and dangerous.  
  
"Mac, look, maybe this is not a good idea. I can see that you're not really. in the mood for a conversation. I just wanted us to. talk, you know. I can come back another time...". He was mumbling, he knew. It was embarrassing for a trained officer, and for a lawyer for the matter, but she had him scared and at loss of words. Not that he would ever admit it aloud.  
  
"What about?", her tone just as icy as before. She hadn't moved of an inch since he had come in, standing with her arms crossed on her chest.  
  
"Sorry?"  
  
"What did you want to talk about that you felt you had the right to come here, banging to my door at this time of night?! What was so damn important? Why do you think that you can come over here, whenever you feel like it, and, most important, why do you assume you'll always find me here, waiting for whatever brilliant revelation of yours to be dropped in my lap?!" Her voice had rose by a knot with every question and she ended her speech almost shouting again and trembling with anger. She was so mad at him, oh, so very mad.  
  
"Mac, be reasonable, I just wanted to talk to you about the other day in the hangar. I don't understand. I tried at JAG, but you wouldn't let me and."  
  
He was at loss of words, once again. What was with this woman that made him unable to put together a sensible sequence of sentences? And why was she so pissed off now? It was always like this with her. She would take whatever he tossed her way without a flinch (and he'd got to admit, sometimes he could be very nasty), but, then, she would go off in a fit of rage like this for no real reason.  
  
"Reasonable, Harm? You want me to be reasonable?"  
  
Bad choice of words, he guessed. Do they really train Marines to kill people with their bare hands? He didn't want to find out.  
  
"OK, let me spell it for you "reasonably". I don't give a damn of whatever you came here to tell me because I had enough of your attitude, I had enough of this dance of yours, I had enough of all your emotional fuckwittage. I can't take anymore of this, do you hear me? I HAD ENOUGH OF YOU, HARM!"  
  
Her finger pointed at him, banging against his chest with every sentence. She almost couldn't breathe, she was shaking, the frustration of dealing with him in the past 7 years overwhelming her. The feeling of helplessness, the wish to smash those bloody walls he had built around himself and storm those beaches, the struggle to get a grip on her feelings on her love everyday were finally taking their toll. She let it all out. Otherwise, she might have exploded. It wasn't his entire fault, she knew, she had her share of blaming too, but right now, she was too mad to be fair. She almost wanted to inflict him bodily harm.  
  
Ok, chuck the "almost".  
  
Harm went from startled to upset to downright mad in three seconds flat. He shouted back, inches from her face.  
  
"My emotional fuckwittage, Mac? MY?! Miss 'I keep a friendship diamond ring on my right hand for ten bloody months'? Am I the one who was ready one night to jump into my bed and the night after slept in Brumby's?"  
  
His head spinned fast and Harm found his neck twisted. How did that happen? Jeez, if it hurt, he could already feel the bruise forming where Mac's hand impacted his cheek.  
  
He turned to face her. There was so much in her eyes, as she stared at him: pain, hurt, rage, lots of it, and passion. He could see the passion underneath that all.  
  
Without thinking, he grabbed her and pulled her roughly against his body. With a hand in her hair, he crashed his mouth against her, drinking from her as if his life depended on it. His other arm went around her waist, keeping her as close as possible and blocking her struggle. She wasn't struggling 'though, he realised somewhere in the back of his mind. Her arms went almost immediately around his neck and she pulled his face down to hers, her lips hungry against his. His hands started roaming over her body, one grasping her tight and lifting it against his hip in the vain attempt to get her closer. Her hands slid to stroke his back, nails nagging into the muscles.  
  
Suddenly, clothing seemed so highly overrated, the urge to feel each other's skins overwhelming, all the feelings and emotions that they have been so careful to handle in the past few years finally taking over. His shirt ended up somewhere near the sofa, her pyjama top on the floor. They were both panting hard, as they slowed down to catch their breaths, foreheads resting against each other, her eyes filled with tears, she didn't know what for.  
  
Realisation of what they were doing dawning on them.  
  
"Sarah.", his voice was husky, soothing her like a caress, taking away the pain, the rage, making her feel protected.  
  
"Ssh, don't talk, Harm, don't say anything", she tried to silence him placing her fingers on his lips, but he kissed them away.  
  
"I have to. It would never be just sex with you, Sarah. It cannot be just sex because I'm in love with you and I'm sorry it took me so long to say it out loud, Sarah, I'm sorry I hurt you so much, I'm sorry.". Her mouth managed to silence him this time, as she pulled him close with all the strength she possessed. He could taste her tears on his lips.  
  
"Don't be sorry, Harm, never be sorry, because I love you right back". Her declaration of love touched his heart in a way he didn't think possible. She loved him and he loved her. Life could be so beautiful. "Let's stop being sorry, Harm, and let's just love each other".  
  
"Is that a request?", he whispered looking in her eyes.  
  
She chuckled, her smile brightening her face with an incredible glow of happiness.  
  
"You bet it is, Sailor"  
  
The End  
  
Feedback, please, please, please!! 


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